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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27184318">Just Like Heaven</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/spelling__bee/pseuds/spelling__bee'>spelling__bee</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Stranger Things (TV 2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Futurefic, aurora illinois, canonically gay will byers, diehard romantic mike wheeler, el has her powers back, long distance, safe sex, sex ed enthusiast mike wheeler, the forever aftermath of childhood trauma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:49:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,505</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27184318</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/spelling__bee/pseuds/spelling__bee</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A road trip, a weekend, a birthday, a concert, and a secret.</p><p>Or: the past follows El into the future, and she deals with it. Just like she always does.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Just Like Heaven</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was sitting in my google doc for ages and I figured it was time to let it out into the world (and force me to write the rest of it). Please note this contains lots of sex, between consenting 18 year olds who are in a long distance relationship. Enjoy, dear ones.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>-</p><p>
  <em> saturday, march 18, 1989 </em>
</p><p>
  <em> - </em>
</p><p>Mike Wheeler knows the four-hour drive from Hawkins to Aurora like the back of his hand. </p><p>It’s more like three and a half if Max is driving and they don’t stop for snacks, and then once they cross the state line it’s really just two and a half. He kind of agrees with El that the system of time zones and daylight savings is needlessly complicated, but he loves the moment when he parks in her driveway and winds his watch back, giving himself an extra hour with her.</p><p>He mostly went with Nancy the first year, until she graduated high school and then instantly moved to New York to go to Columbia and be sickeningly in love with Jonathan. After that, they had a shitty dry spell until the moment the first of them got a license (Max, of course). He and Lucas and Max and Dustin have shared so many drives up he’s lost count. The Byers don’t come back to Hawkins much. They never have much spare gas money and Joyce needs the car to commute anyway, but no one minds that it works out this way - the ones still left in Hawkins are itching to get out any chance they get. </p><p>Today, though, it’s just Mike in the shitty ‘82 Escort he went halves on with his mom after working all summer. It barely has shocks anymore and it only picks up AM radio, but it gets him where he needs to go: to her.</p><p>He’s been counting down in number of trips. One this weekend, for her birthday. Two back to back in early May, for the Hawkins High prom and then for hers. After that, it’ll just be a one-way trip sometime in late June, to wherever they end up. He and Dustin have already been accepted to Illinois Tech and Lucas got into Northwestern, but they’re all still waiting to hear from U of I at Urbana–Champaign. Wherever they go, they’ve agreed to do it together. Not just him and El (that’s been a done deal for years), but the whole Party. </p><p>The signs speed by as the day turns to dusk and snack detritus piles up on the passenger seat. It’s only radio static on this stretch of highway, but these are Mike’s favourite parts of the solo drives. The quiet and the open road always make him feel sort of...free, in a way he never feels in Hawkins. He could be anything and anyone. No one’s watching, and it’s just him, deciding what happens next. It’s peaceful. Also, there’s no one there to judge how dumb he sounds singing loudly in the empty car. He hums the guitar melody of that New Order song El loves and drums along on the steering wheel, yelling off-key - “Heaven knows! It’s got to be this! Time!” </p><p>It’s after ten by the time he parks and goes to the door, but every light in the house is still on, and he doesn’t even need to knock before El and Will have the door open and they’re tackling him with hugs. Joyce stands behind them patiently, then folds him into her arms once they’ve let him go. “Hi, honey, it’s good to see you.”</p><p>Even though he and El have only been apart for six weeks, it always feels like much longer. El keeps hold of his hand the whole time as he comes inside, drops his bag on the floor and settles onto the sofa.They gravitate to one another, maintaining at least one point of contact at all times. Her hand rests on his leg and his is on the back of her neck, just under her hairline as they sit on the sofa to chat with Will, and assure Joyce that the drive up was fine and yes, his car is actually still legal to be on the road. </p><p>When Joyce goes to bed, she knows better than to bother telling the three of them not to stay up too late, and the moment her bedroom door closes El slides fully into Mike’s lap like it’s exactly where she belongs. Will’s next to them, lazily sprawled with his legs on top of El’s as he gives them a play by play of the second date he had the previous night. </p><p>He stares dreamily at the ceiling. “I really feel a connection with him. Like, this is something special, you know?” </p><p>El huffs. “That’s what you say about all the incredibly <em> cool </em> art school boys you go on, like, three dates with.”</p><p>Will rolls his eyes and kicks her half-heartedly. “Whatever. Maybe this one is my soulmate and you’ll have to admit how wrong you were to doubt me.”</p><p>“Yeah, right.” She nudges him back with her foot. “Just make sure he keeps taking you on nice dates. Don’t put up with any Burger King dinner bullshit.”</p><p>“Burger King?” asks Mike, laughing.</p><p>Will groans. “He meant well, okay? But it was pretty bad.”</p><p>El starts telling the story. “This guy comes to pick Will up for a dinner date, rolls up in a nice car and looks put together and everything. His name was<em> Todd </em> or <em> Chad </em> or something like that.” She rolls her eyes dramatically.</p><p>Will jumps in. “He said he was going to surprise me. Turns out that meant we went through the Burger King drive-thru and he was going to take me for a...picnic?” He sounds incredulous even retelling his own story. “It was like, 45 degrees out and the burgers got cold. I faked a really bad headache so he would take me home.”</p><p>“And then accidentally lost his number,” says El, giggling. </p><p>“Never again,” says Will. “It’s only uphill from here.”</p><p>“Shit,” says Mike in a serious tone. He looks at El solemnly. “I guess I’ll cancel the KFC reservations for tomorrow night, then.” </p><p>She kisses him. “I’d deal with it. For you.”</p><p>Mike grins and leans in to kiss her again. And then again. And again.</p><p>Will unfolds himself from the couch. “All right, at least save it till I’ve gone to bed too. And don’t forget, we share a wall.” He looks at them pointedly.</p><p>“Night!” says El brightly, waving him off. </p><p>Will rolls his eyes and heads down the hallway with a wave over his shoulder. He and El are like two completely normal siblings, bickering because they love each other, and Mike never gets tired of seeing it. He was devastated when they moved away, but these days, he can also be grateful that they got the space to grow into a (sort of, kinda) normal family. </p><p>El’s looking at him, her arms looped around his neck as she sits cradled in his lap.</p><p>“Hey,” he says softly.</p><p>“Hey, beautiful,” she says, gently brushing her fingers through his hair. She mostly sounds like any other teenager now when she talks, but Mike loves the little idiosyncrasies left behind - like how when she’s really tired she sometimes slips and says the time all in single digits, or how she never understood why some compliment words were supposedly for boys and others were for girls, so she calls Max handsome and Mike beautiful all the time, or how the word “promise” holds a serious weight for her that most people don’t understand when they toss it off casually. </p><p>He loves her so much it feels like he’s overflowing, sometimes. </p><p>He takes her hand and kisses her again, and she melts against him like they were made to fit together. She kisses his mouth, his jaw, the curve of his ear, and down his neck, and he shivers with the sensation of her breath against his skin as she says, “Let’s go to my room.” She pulls back to look at him and they grin at each other. He gently slides her off his lap and follows her down the hallway, heart starting to race a little.</p><p>Between long distance, superpowers, and figuring out the landmines of trauma, they’ve never really been like other high school couples, and they tended to take things slow. Physically, that is - there’s nothing slow about meeting the love of your life at age twelve.</p><p>They took their time getting here, but they’ve finally had sex now a total of three (3) times, and Mike has indelibly burned the memories into his brain replaying them over and over. He can’t fucking wait to do it again (and have something fresh to daydream about at home when he should be doing homework). Judging by the way El tugs him into her room and pushes him excitedly toward the bed, she feels the same way. </p><p>She flips the lock on the door and comes over to lie down next to him, taking his hand again. “C’mere,” she says, and he’ll do pretty much anything she asks in this moment. They find each other’s mouths again and he puts a leg over hers, moving half on top of her and groaning a little as she lightly scrapes her teeth over his bottom lip. He pulls her closer and slips his hand under her shirt, tracing upwards on the soft skin of her back as she arches into him, her tongue in his mouth and hands in his hair. His brain is quickly shutting off as the minutes go on, and all he knows is he wants to make her feel <em> so good </em>. He can’t help moving against her where her thigh is firmly right between his legs, and he moans into her neck, sucking kisses into the place just below her ear that makes her shiver. </p><p>It feels like every time they’re together it’s more intense, more hot, just<em> more </em> . Last time he went home after a visit, she’d called him the next day and told him about the hickey on her inner thigh, and he hadn’t been able to think about anything else for days. It’s some visceral feeling he can’t quite name that makes him want to leave marks <em> all over </em>her, reminders of where he was and what they did. Her hand fists in his hair and she kisses him hard, and she smells so fucking good and she’s pressed so close he can feel her breasts against his chest and - </p><p>“Oh, damn,” he half-squeaks as she reaches down and starts undoing his belt.</p><p>“Is this okay?” she asks, her face flushed and eyes dark. “I can’t be patient, it’s been six weeks and I’ve been thinking about this every day.” </p><p>He’s pretty sure his brain just straight up short-circuits. “Yes! Yes, yes, that’s okay, that’s great,” he says, fumbling to help her with his jeans. Between the two of them they manage to get his pants off, then his shirt and her dress, their underwear and her bra (with some tangling), and he’s left in nothing but socks as she lies there looking up at him.</p><p>El giggles. “This? This is a hot look.” Mike grins and strikes a pinup pose on the bed, accentuating his dumbass gym socks, then sits up and peels them off before climbing on top of her, settling most of his weight on his arms on either side of her head.</p><p>She runs her hands down his chest, gently runs her nails along his ribs and around his back to wrap her arms around him. Her blush spreads down her neck and onto her chest and he follows it with his mouth, tasting her skin as he kisses her collarbones, her sternum, the curve of her breast. She moans quietly, then stifles a gasp in her hand when his mouth reaches her nipple, sucking lightly and licking for a moment before shifting to pay attention to the other side. There’s something incredibly hot about how she’s covering her mouth and trying to be quiet but failing, letting out another high-pitched gasp as he sucks a little harder, his hand smoothing down her side to palm her absolutely gorgeous ass. He’s so turned on he’s pretty sure there’s no blood left in any other part of his body, and he moans into her skin.</p><p>She sits up suddenly and then she’s pushing him onto his back, throwing a leg over to straddle him as she kisses him fiercely and bites his lip. The way she’s positioned he can feel her warmth so damn close to exactly where he wants it, he can feel that she’s wet and yeah, he’s gonna die cause this is too good.</p><p>“Mike?” she says, pulling away enough to look at him. He tries to gather some brainpower. </p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>She smiles. “Remember last time? When we did, um, oral sex?” </p><p>He nods. </p><p>“I want to do that again. Can I do that on you this time?”</p><p>He nods so vigorously he’s pretty sure he sprains something in his neck. He can feel how big his eyes are and he probably looks like a dorky deer in headlights but she’s just smiling excitedly at him, and one of the things he loves most about her is how she kinda missed the part of growing up where you learn to be embarrassed about certain things. So she just says what she wants, and tells the truth even when it’s stuff that makes him blush flaming red - but now she’s shifting down the bed and he stops thinking entirely. </p><p>He half sits up against the pillows and she settles herself in the V of his legs, running her hands over his hipbones and leaving goosebumps where she’s touched. Then she leans over and presses her mouth to the skin of his inner thigh, her hair brushing him softly as she bites just a little and kisses hard, clearly with the intent of leaving her own mark behind this time. He reaches down and tucks her hair behind her ear, both so it’s out of her face and so he can see everything she’s doing. She smiles at him, says, “Tell me what feels good,” but he can’t really get words out because then her soft, hot tongue is trailing slowly up the underside of his dick. <em> Holy shit. </em></p><p>She spends a few long minutes just exploring, her mouth wet and hot and perfect as she experiments with what makes him twitch and how deep she can comfortably take him. He’s the one trying to stifle his sounds now, and he hears himself letting out the same kind of surprised moans El had last time they were together, when he tasted her for the first time.</p><p>El starts to speed up what she’s doing. She’s setting a rhythm with her mouth and hands now, there’s just a little more suction and then she looks up<em> straight into his eyes </em>with her lips around him and -- </p><p>“Wait! Stop, stop,” he gasps, scrambling to put some space between them. </p><p>El looks nervous and a little guilty, and he knows what she’s thinking. “Nothing bad!” he says quickly. “Nothing bad. That was amazing, I’m just, uh, a little...overwhelmed.” Her face relaxes a bit, and so does he.</p><p>
  <em> Be honest. </em>
</p><p>He feels his face redden as he says, “It’s, uh...I was just really really close to coming and I didn’t want to yet. I wanna keep doing this for a while.”</p><p>She smiles, and the anxiety in her expression is gone. “I wanna keep doing this, too.” </p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>They lie down next to one another on their backs, and he hooks his pinky around hers the way they always do. She takes a breath in like she’s going to say something, then rolls on her side to look at him.</p><p>“Did it feel good?” she asks softly.</p><p>He huffs out a laugh. “I said amazing, I meant amazing. That was...yeah, wow.” He turns to look down at her. “You’re amazing.”</p><p>She nuzzles his arm with the tip of her nose and kisses his bicep. “Good.”</p><p>He turns on his side, too, so they’re face to face. Her curls are backlit by the small lamp on her bedside table. He thinks about when he’ll be able to see her just like this, whenever they want. She leans in and rests her forehead on his, and they’re quiet for a moment. </p><p>Eventually Mike feels his heart slow down and the tension run out of his muscles, the sense of urgency fading away. </p><p>“Okay,” he says softly, their faces almost touching. “I think, um, I’m good now.” She smiles and kisses him, and he’s kind of astounded for the millionth time that he, Mike Wheeler, gets to be here, doing this. With <em> this </em> girl. </p><p>They make out for a while and he finds himself mostly back on top of her again, one hand buried in her hair, pulling it gently the way they discovered she likes while the other roams. His mouth is on her neck as he skims his fingers down her breast, her ribs, her hips, her thigh, and she parts her legs, making small needy sounds. He pauses, hand just ghosting over the crease of her inner thigh. </p><p>“This okay?”</p><p>It’s apparently her turn to look a little wide-eyed. She nods. “Yes, yes.”</p><p>He stays close but pulls back enough to be able to look at her as he gently presses a finger just inside her, feeling how wet and hot she is. She gasps a little at the feeling, and he studies her face as he lightly strokes over her clit with two fingers, circling slowly over and over as she closes her eyes and throws a hand over her mouth again. She’s breathing heavily and arching into his hand as he touches her with just a little more pressure, moving his hand a little faster.</p><p>He fucking loves being able to make her moan. He’s enough of a nerd that when Nancy mailed him a copy of The Joy of Sex (with a note: <em> Hawkins sex ed is bullshit. Don’t be dumb. </em>), he’d only wallowed in embarrassment for like a day before he got down to soaking up some information. She was right, there was a lot that Dustin’s shoplifted Penthouse and the Hawkins High health class left out. </p><p>Like this. </p><p>El squeaks a little and then abruptly grabs his hand, sitting up a bit to look at him. He opens his mouth to say something but she’s fast, her hand on his face as she kisses him fiercely. She pulls back to look at him and she looks kind of wild, her bottom lip pink where she’s been biting it.</p><p>“I want you inside me now,” she says. Her fingers tighten against his jaw as she adds, “Please,” which does something intense to Mike’s insides that he can’t quite identify.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah,” he says, reaching over to dig through her bedside drawer for a condom. It takes him like three tries to actually put it on because she’s distractingly close, kissing the back of his neck, but eventually he’s got it and they settle back where they were. She’s grinning up at him and he smiles back, and then probably his face does something ridiculous because he’s finally pressing inside her and all the daydreams couldn’t capture how fucking perfect this is. </p><p>“That feels...so good,” she whispers, looking wide-eyed at him, and all he can do is nod as he slowly, slowly starts rocking his hips against her, spellbound by the slide in and out of gorgeous heat. She pulls him close to kiss him and moans against his mouth as he moves, tilting her hips so he sinks just a little deeper into her. It’s only March but it feels like the room is a thousand degrees, everything hot and bright and overwhelming as he kisses her neck, her lips, her hair, wherever he can reach. </p><p>She smiles at him like sunlight, her cheeks flushed, and then she’s reaching down to touch herself while he’s inside her and <em> holy shit. </em> Mike has to close his eyes and think really fucking hard about cosine functions for a minute to keep from coming <em> right now, </em> but it doesn’t make much difference, because when he opens them El is still looking at him and her hand is moving faster in circles over her clit as he moves to meet her. And then she’s running the nails of her other hand down his back and grabbing his hip to feel him thrusting faster and faster inside her, and she’s making these fucking delicious little <em> oh, oh </em> noises, and then she says in a choked voice, “Oh, I’m going to - ” and Mike gasps out “Oh my God, yes, please - ” and then she’s shaking apart around him and muffling her cries into the pillow next to her and he’s coming so hard he feels it in his fingertips and toes and everywhere and he can’t breathe for a second, until the tension peaks and falls and he collapses onto her sweat-damp skin, his ears buzzing.</p><p>She weaves her fingers into his hair and kisses his forehead, letting out a tremulous breath. They’re quiet for a long moment, their breaths becoming more even and heartbeats slowing. Eventually Mike’s brain comes back online enough for him to shift to the side, take off the condom and toss it in the trash by the bed. He grabs the quilt as he settles back down next to her, drawing it up over both of them, and she nestles close with her head on his chest.</p><p>“I love you,” he whispers, his cheek resting on her curls. </p><p>She hums with contentment and whispers back, “Love you.” She somehow snuggles closer than she already was, and Mike squeezes her in a hug until she lets out a squeak and giggles. </p><p>“You sleepy?” he asks, and she nods against him. It’s already hard to keep his eyes open and when she yawns it’s contagious, both of them ready to doze off. El twitches her head toward the lamp and it goes out, leaving them with only a strip of moonlight peeking under the curtain as they fall asleep, holding one another close. </p><p>-</p><p>
  <em> sunday, march 19, 1989 </em>
</p><p>-</p><p>El wakes up and her sheets smell like sweat and sex and Mike. She smiles into the pillow and then turns over, squinting at the clock. 10:07.</p><p>She’s alone in the bed and the sheets are cool where he was next to her. He’s always been more of a morning person. </p><p>True to form, she hears his footsteps in the hall and then he backs into the room, a mug in each hand.</p><p>“Oh, hey, you’re up,” he says, holding out one of the mugs to her.</p><p>“Barely,” she yawns, sitting up to accept it. She blows on the hot coffee as Mike settles beside her, leaned against the headboard.</p><p>“Okay, well, your surprises today require some travel, so we can’t spend all day in bed,” he says, looking adorably excited. </p><p>He’s very romantic. El thinks it’s interesting, all the rules about what men and women are supposed to do. No one says so explicitly, but she pays attention to her friends and back issues of Cosmo and romance movies and books. For example, there’s the idea the boys had when they were all younger that women are the emotional ones, and men are logical. Or the story everyone seems to believe where men want sex, and women want romance. </p><p>El wants both, even if those aren’t the rules. </p><p>Sometimes Mike still seems surprised when she’s honest about it, even though they’ve known each other for so long. Like right now. His eyes are going wide as she takes the coffee cup out of his hand and puts it on the dresser next to the bed so she can climb into his lap. She locks the door behind them with a flick of her head, and kisses him.</p><p>“Can we spend a<em> little </em> of the day in bed?” she asks, and he pretends to think about it. She knows he wants both, too. </p><p>“Yeah, I suppose we can do that,” he says, and wraps her up in his arms, kissing her back again and again. </p><p>Sometimes he seems surprised by what she wants, but it always seems like a good surprise. He never makes her feel like a freak, or that what she wants is bad. The rules just don’t feel all that important when it’s the two of them. El has a flash of a memory, years ago, tossing a lifeguarding dummy over her shoulder and telling Mike she <em> made her own rules </em> with a bravado that felt good to try on. </p><p>She tries to summon it now, try it on again. There are so many things outside of her control, things that sit heavy on her chest. But here with him, they don’t have to matter. Not right now.</p><p>He reaches away from her to grab a condom out of the drawer, and she stops him, her hand on his arm. </p><p>“We don’t have to - I, um, I started taking the pill.” The lie stumbles on her tongue and she wants to tell the truth (they <em> don’t lie </em>), but she wants this perfect morning more. He looks at her, a mix of surprised and excited.</p><p>“Really? I mean, are you sure you’re okay with that?” he asks, a little breathless.</p><p>“Yeah, I’m sure,” she says, smiling at him, and then kissing him before he notices that it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. </p><p>They explore each other, taking their time. The sun travels slowly across the bed and the way he looks in the light against her, sweat and faint freckles scattered over his nose, makes El kind of want to cry. She won’t stop if she starts, though, and today is for being happy. She traces the freckles with her fingertips instead and holds his face in her hands as she kisses him, again and again. </p><p>It doesn’t feel much different for her without a condom but he looks astonished, almost pained, dipping his head to moan into her hair. They’re so close, wrapped up deep in each other and she can barely tell where she ends and he begins. El holds him, cocooned under his long limbs. She thinks about how hard it was to start naming what she felt, trying to find words she’d never learned for her heart and her mind. Now, she thinks, she is feeling...gratitude. Mike is warm and sweat-damp and <em> here </em>, his hair brushing against her cheek, saying something incoherent and pleading in her ear and she is so, so grateful for every moment of it. </p><p>And she is also feeling fear. That she will lose this. That she will be alone. </p><p>El blinks, pushing that thought away, refocusing on being here, now. She has more important things to focus on, like rolling Mike over onto his back and giggling at his ungraceful flop onto the bed as she climbs on top of him. This is what’s important, right here. </p><p>After that, she doesn’t think much at all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I have the rest of this arc planned out, it's just a matter of putting it on the page (screen). Please do let me know if you want to see more.  Thank you for reading &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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